Modern societies depend on the generation of electricity to provide energy for powering electronic and/or mechanical devices, heating and/or cooling buildings, and numerous other applications. This reliance on electricity to cool homes and power electrical and/or mechanical devices has resulted in an increase in the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal. In addition, nuclear power plants have been increasingly used to produce electricity, and other types of combustion facilities such as, for example, tire burning plants have been proposed to meet the growing energy demands. Generally, the combustion of coal, and other fossil fuels, can result in large quantities of pollutants such as organic by-products and carbon monoxide being introduced into the atmosphere. Additionally, it is well known that spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power facilities can create environmental hazards that require expensive disposal procedures and equipment to store and dispose of nuclear waste.
Materials such as plastic and metals can be generally classified as ferromagnetic, paramagnetic or diamagnetic. For example, metals such as iron, cobalt, nickel and various alloys of these metals, are considered to be ferromagnetic. In general, ferromagnetic materials can become magnetized by subjecting the ferromagnetic material to an external magnetic field, which can be applied by another magnet and/or an electromagnet. Additionally, ferromagnetic materials can be influenced by an external magnet field such that ferromagnetic materials can be attracted to magnets. Paramagnetic materials such as, for example, aluminum, copper and gold, can be weakly influenced by a magnet, however, the attractive force of a paramagnetic material is typically unobservable without expensive monitoring equipment. Diamagnetic materials are generally all other materials that exhibit no measurable attraction or repulsion to the presence of an external magnetic field.
As noted above, magnets are materials that can attract, for example, ferromagnetic materials such as iron or cobalt. Moreover, the external magnetic field of a magnet can act upon ferromagnetic materials and cause unpaired electron spins to align in parallel, which creates a magnetic field around the ferromagnetic material. Furthermore, it is known that magnets can have a north pole and a south pole, and that the south pole of one magnet can be attracted to the north pole of an adjacent magnet. Additionally, it is also known that the similar poles of two magnets can repel each other, if the similar poles of the two magnets are located proximate one another.